Chances are, you’re not a billionaire. Forbes’ 2025 list of billionaires includes 3,028 names, more than ever before, but still pretty paltry compared to the world’s total population of over 8 billion.
But you’ve probably also wished you were a billionaire. Who among us hasn’t looked at the likes of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and wished they had just a fraction of their net worth?
There’s a lot of discourse in the world now about whether or not it’s actually ethical to be a billionaire. Some say that there’s no way to come by so much money completely honestly. Still, some defend billionaires, claiming that they worked hard and earned their money.
TikTok creator Ariana Tomlinson recently shared her thoughts on what it takes to become a billionaire, and she wasn’t very complimentary of the world’s top 1%, or those who stand up for them.
“If you defend billionaires, you don’t know how much one billion is,” she said. “You don’t understand how big that number is. And that’s okay. The human brain literally can’t comprehend numbers that big.”
To help people understand the actual meaning of $1 billion, Tomlinson offered some specific examples.
“If you were to stack 100 dollar bills to make one million, it would be about three and a half feet tall,” she said. “If you were to stack 100-dollar bills to make one billion, it would be taller than the tallest building in the world. Over 3,000 feet tall.”
She continued, “If you deposited $100 in a bank account every single day from the birth of Jesus Christ until now, you wouldn’t even have one tenth of a billion. In fact, if you were to make $100 every single day, it would take you over 27,000 years to get to one billion. Over 27,000 years? That’s longer than all of recorded human history.”
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“You can work hard and become a millionaire,” she admitted. “There is absolutely no way to become a billionaire without exploiting somebody.”
Tomlinson has some pretty big names backing up her line of thinking. At the recent WSJ Magazine Innovator Awards, Billie Eilish called out billionaires, some of whom were present at the event.
“I love you all, but there are a few people here with a lot more money than me,” she said. “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties.”
Celebrity Net Worth put Eilish’s net worth at $50 million, which is certainly nothing for her to be mad about, but it’s a far cry from fellow awards show attendee Mark Zuckerberg, who Forbes said has a net worth of $223.8 billion. According to Fortune, People Magazine reported that Zuckerberg did not applaud Eilish’s remarks like others in the crowd did.
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One billion is truly a number beyond comprehension, as Tomlinson said. And yet, billionaires gain and lose that amount of money all the time. We regularly come across news reports about someone like Elon Musk gaining or losing another billion dollars. It’s like it has no real meaning, even to the people who have that kind of money.
It seems almost impossible to defend someone who has so much money that they can gain or lose some of it without feeling any real impact. Perhaps it would be unfair to say that all billionaires are unethical, but there’s definitely something that feels off about being so wealthy.
Maybe they didn’t all exploit someone as Tomlinson posited, but it feels like it wouldn’t be realistic to amass that kind of money without doing something at least a little questionable. Because if it were simple, everyone would be a billionaire by now.
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Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
